There would have been times in the past when national governments would have projectile vomited at the suggestion they have anything to do with the online gambling industry. Next to teaming up with Satan it was quite low down in the estimations of a great deal of the world’s leading powers. All this was before the global financial crisis hit and many nations were shit out of luck.
When the chips are down they will look to anything that’s doing well to save their country from sinking and this is where online gambling comes in. You only have to look at one of the major casualties of the crisis, Greece, and the fact that they’re one of the latest to be looking at the potential online gambling could bring to their country.
With the USA also likely to have something in place at an intrastate level in the near future, the report released today by H2 Gambling Capital won’t surprise a massive amount of those present in the industry.
eGaming Review have marked the New Year by publishing the figures, the headline that the online gaming industry grew by 12.5% in 2010. This will be music to the ears of everyone, including those eavesdropping governments looking for a quick buck.
Gross win generated by the egaming industry as a whole was up 12.5% on 2009, to US$29.95bn, and even when you take away the World Cup the figure only bottoms out to 11.4%, showing that the sector isn’t over-reliant on large events only.
As far as the best performers inside the online gambling industry itself, bingo and casino were the leading lights, bingo’s gross win growing by 28.4% to US$2.67bn, casino growing 13.3% to US$6.24bn.
Poker saw the slowest growth with the gross win up to US$5.06bn, 7.1% on 2009.
H2 also told eGR that mobile devices were also key drivers of growth in 2010, said the Manchester-based data business and consultancy, a trend H2 expects to continue in the coming years. This echoes the view of many in the industry that mobile is set to continue it’s status as one of the leading mediums with which to access online gambling sites.
